Featured Ivory or not????

Bought this listed as a “19th century Sri Lankan desk set” recently at auction and wondered if it was inset with ivory or not. Decided to micro photograph some of the inserts to figure out what they were made of so removed the rear flat plate and photographed most of the inserts. Couldn't do the small tusks as the microscope gain was too high but they didn't seem to have any patterns on them. These inserts are between 4mm and 8-9mm in diameter.
I cant see any Schreger lines that would identify it as ivory and I cant see a Haversian
system indicating bone. There appears to be some dentine patterns so it's possibly
something like warthog tusks.

Any ideas as to what the material is??

Cheers

Stephen

 

Nice set, Stephen. The inlay is bone.
Whether or not you see a Haversian unit depends on the kind of bone - which animal, size of bone - and the way it has been cut.
Warthogs live in Africa, Sri Lanka has wild boar. But this is bone. Wild pig tusks have irregular dentine lines, without the schreger cross-hatching. The cross-section is triangular, not round.
Bone can also have lines. Those are the lines you see in your inlay.

 

Thanks for the information and conformation AJ. Good to know it's not ivory.
Cheers
Stephen

 

Just curious. Why are you happy it's not ivory? Asking this to learn. To me it seems like it's worth more when it was ivory? Or not? Or do you mean tour are happy it's not ivory because of the elephants? Any info input is welcome

 

People are usually happy it's not ivory because of the elephants and because in most countries it is almost impossible to sell ivory, even if it is pre-cites.

 

lots of threads here on how Ivory has become hard to sell !!

 

Bone from ye olde moo cow on the other hand, is no problem. No one cares about the bone from the Sunday roast.

 

The gangs right about ivory being a real nuisance to deal with these days. That's why I go to all the trouble to micro-photograph things so I've got proof of what it is. I once ended up with one of those flat ivory piece chess sets in an auction lot that ended up in the bin as it was unsalable. Managed to find a few left over snapshots of the Schreger lines taken with the same camera setup.

Cheers
Stephen

 

The lines will only be visible like that from an end cut. The pics can rule in but not necessarily rule out.

 

Depending on the size of the tusk,the outside "rind" can be as thick as 10 mm or more and does not have Schreger lines.

 

An easy way to tell if it is ivory or bone on an Indian or Sri Lankan piece is the quality of the woodwork. If the type of wood and the carving are top quality, the inlay is likely to be ivory, if they are lesser quality, it is bone. Lesser quality can still be attractive, as this set is, but top quality is stunning.

 

Sorry to bring bad news, these dots are definitely ivory, this wear was made in Ceylon 1880-1900. There's no doubt this was made before the CITES cut off date. There are a number of these on ebay ATM

 

I'm always tempted to think negatively about antique bone inlaid items and assume that they were always ivory because it was somehow magically as cheap as chips and could be used in an average quality desk set like mine but I'm not convinced. I've got well over one hundred inlaid samples that have no signs of Schreger lines and even though that's not a guarantee of bone, statistically it is significant. I think you are right about location and date but you seem to be saying that absolutely everything like this was ivory. That seems to be remarkably definitive and absolute and suggests the local manufacturers didn't ever use bone on the cheaper units. Personally if I were them I wouldn't have hesitated to flog of bone as ivory to the "stupid English". Tried to find these "number of these on eBay" you mentioned and managed to find one with one inkwell and a single elephant that looked similar and a quill holder with the same style. There were also modern inlaid elephant bookends and lots of elephants crossing a bridge but they all looked modern. Tried every eBay search trick I could think of but couldn't find many more. Anyway - for the moment I'm still convinced that "Any Jewelry" hit the nail on the head.
Cheers
Stephen

 

I collect Indian antiques, the quality doesn't matter, Ivory dots such as these were very cheap as the smallest off cuts were used, the expensive pieces were the large pieces such as the top and bottom of ivory boxes where the whole raids needed to be used. The ebony cost far more. Anyway your piece isn't that bad and these have gone up in price quite considerably in the last year. If you need to sell it just call it bone, anyone wishing to buy it will know they are ivory.